37
Designing open infrastructures for professional development Peter B. Sloep Supporting Sustainable eLearning Forum March 25, 2010 Glasgow Sunday, March 28, 2010

Designing open infrastructures for professional development

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Presentation for a doctoral seminar at the Glasgow Caledonian University Glasgow, UK, March 25, 2010. The argument put forth is that open, distributed infrastructures are the way go for networked learning, particularly in the non-formal settings that are needed for professional development to thrive.

Citation preview

Page 1: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

Designing open infrastructures for professional development

Peter B. SloepSupporting Sustainable eLearning Forum

March 25, 2010 Glasgow

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 2: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

overview• the problem - six use cases

• inspiration - open source networks

• a hypothesis- Learning Networks

• performance tests - design research

• design requirements - two scenarios

• break

• discussion - summarise, discuss, report back

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 3: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

the problemsix use cases

1

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 4: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

update & upgrade

James is a chemical engineer working for an SME. He wants to pursue a career as a water manager with the local water board. He therefore needs to update and upgrade his skills.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 5: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

extendJean, a lawyer working for a

pharmaceutical company, finds out she needs to expand her knowledge in order to get a

more thorough understanding of the science part of the company,

in particular about biotechnology.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 6: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

internal knowledge

sharing/buildingA multinational wants to do away with its travelling road show of

trainers and stimulate its employees to study online. They

also want to stimulate the build-up of a collective knowledge base and stimulate the emergence of

communities of practice.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 7: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

innovationThe association of public

libraries wants to rethink its role in society and retrain its personel in the process.

Collaborative open innovation and creativity as well as joint sense making and learning are key.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 8: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

keeping up to date

An SME wants to innovate constantly and therefore needs to keep its personel up to date. Collaborative open innovation and creativity as well as joint sense making and learning are key.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 9: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

world-wide knowledge

sharingA large international agency wants to distribute existing

knowledge on a particular topic more equitably. Not duplicating

existing work and world-wide knowledge sharing are key.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 10: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

inspirationopen source networks

2

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 11: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

‘Internet technologies radically undermine organizational structures because they reduce the cost of communications and transactions toward an asymptote of zero (p.171).’

Hence, go online.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 12: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

‘This enables the formation of ‘episodic communities on demand’, so-called virtual organizations that come together frictionlessly for a particular task and then redistribute to the next task just as smoothly.’

Hence, use a networked approach.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 13: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

• There are deeper levels to the book

• micro-foundations, what drives people: pride; being an innovator; self-promotion; doing things together

• macro-organisation, how to make it work: co-ordination (individual incentives, shared norms, and leadership), cope with complexity (division of labour)

Weber, S. (2004). The Success of Open Source. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 14: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

a hypothesisLearning Networks

3

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 15: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

a hypothesis

All use cases may be addressed by working with Learning Networks, online, social networks that have been modelled after networks for open source software development.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 16: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

formallearning

non-formallearning

informallearning

initial education

post-initial education

‘ordinary’ education

rare occasion

out of scope

‘continuous’ education

lifelong learning

out of scope

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 17: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

A Learning Network = DF

an online social network that is specifically designed to support lifelong learning and lifelong professional development

(note: emphasis on post-initial education)

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 18: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

performance testsdesign research

4

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 19: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

smokesmoke

S1 S2 S3

Ia Ib

Ic

play online games

therapy

do nothing

healthy out of balance

addicted

theoretical models

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 20: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

• such models are tested by predicting future behaviour (a hypothesis) and comparing it with actual behaviour (data)

• this leads to confirmation, rejection, but usually adaptation of the model

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 21: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

• a Learning Network is a natural system, but one that is designed for a purpose: artefact

• its design is based on confirmed knowledge and to the extent that that is missing, on assumed knowledge (and we never have full knowledge)

• so artefacts may fail to do what they were designed to do

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 22: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

Si

St

SoI

targeted state of the system (artefact) is different than the obtained (observed) state

the existence of a difference means: i) our theoretical model is wrongii) our assumptions are wrong

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 23: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

• unlike natural systems artefacts are tested for performance (so you need criteria!)

• testing leads to rejection, acceptance, but usually redesign

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 24: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

goals to be achieved

goals achieved

learning activities

teacherperception

teacherdesign

teacherdesign

studentperception

learning activities

design for social learning

Wiebe Bijker: the interpretative flexibility of artefacts (philosophy of technology)

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 25: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

design requirementstwo scenarios

5

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 26: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

support services• online profiling

• e-portfolio

• assessment of (prior) learning

• collaboration support (scheduling)

• off-topic socialising

• content matching

• coaching & tutoring (peer, teacher)

• authoring

• network visualisation

• billing

• live streaming

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 27: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

• there is an organisation which is in control, acts as a one-stop-shop for services

• an online environment is designed, developed, maintained by them

• you have to ‘go there’ to participate in the network

• it is a closed infrastructure

centralised control

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 28: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

examples

• VLEs such as Moodle, Blackboard

• Content Management systems such as Sharepoint, Drupal

• portals such iGoogle, Netvibes, Liferay

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 29: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

distributed control

• your desktop is your environment, no one is in control

• use all kinds of Web 2.0 tools to assemble an open infrastructure for learning

• but: tools should somehow be interoperable (APIs, open social, Open ID, IMS tool interoperability, widgets)

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 30: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

examples• LinkedIn, FaceBook, Yammer, Academia

• Mindmeister, Google docs

• Twitter, Jabber

• Slideshare

• Del.icio.us, Zotero, CiteUlike, Connotea

• Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikibooks

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 31: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

break

6

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 32: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

in summarysummarise, discuss,

report back

7

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 33: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

1. the problem - design for professional development, taking personal and organisational interests into account

2. inspiration - open source development shows the way

3. a hypothesis - networks for learning, best modelled after open source networks?

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 34: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

4. test - use a design-research methodology for ‘hypothesis’ testing

5. requirements - look at what we already know about learning and interaction

6. two solution scenarios - differentiate between a centralised and distributed approach

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 35: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

Yochai BenklerUniversity networks and technical platforms will have to focus on managing the increasingly permeable boundaries among universities, and between universities and the world outside them. University platform design should be focused on ensuring that faculty and students have the greatest degree possible of authority and capacity to act freely, innovate internally, and participate externally.

Benkler, Y. (2009). The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing. In R. N. Katz (Ed.), The University in the Networked Economy and Society: Challenges and Opportunities (pp. 51-61). Educause.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 36: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

questions 1. How should one piece together out of

existing ‘parts’ a learning environment for the distributed scenario?

2. Is my list of services jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive?

3. What ‘applications’ match what services?

4. How can this be made economically viable?

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Page 37: Designing open infrastructures for professional development

Questions?Follow-up

mail: peter.sloep <at> ou.nlhttp:pbsloep.nlhttp:celstec.org

http:dspace.ou.nltwitter: pbsloepjabber: pbsloep

del.icio.us: pbsloepslideshare: pbsloep

Sunday, March 28, 2010